On the list of people who strongly influenced women’s roles in Michigan law, Julia Donovan Darlow’s ranking surely is in the single-digits. Reflecting back on the years before she was elected the State Bar of Michigan’s first female president in 1986, Darlow said women had long faced challenges in the legal field.

“The expectations were so much different back then,” she said. “There weren’t women in great numbers in the law. When I started law in 1971, there was only a handful of women judges and women in most professions in general.”

But once she was chosen to head the Bar, there was a marked difference in terms of women’s roles in legal leadership.

“I remember women friends of mine were becoming judges around the same time I became president,” she said. “We felt that a lot could happen and was happening.”

And, because Darlow had the power to appoint committee chairs, she would make sure women were represented.

“It was an opportunity to make sure women who should be considered were,” she said. “That’s something I worked hard on.”

For example, as task forces were being formed around country regarding gender and race in the courts, Darlow worked with then-Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice G. Mennen Williams on starting a similar program. Among the issues the group explored in the state was domestic violence. Heartbreaking stories she heard at public hearings across the state made her realize that the subject needed to be clarified before judges.

“It was often misunderstood enough in the justice system,” she said. “There were many people who thought women provoked the violence, and didn’t understand the dynamics within dysfunctional relationships. So we were able to recommend that judges be educated on how this problem works with people. And it’s a much better understood problem – though it persists as a problem.”

Darlow also put a spotlight on laws affecting seniors, particularly the ones involving guardianship, and appointed a committee to address and improve them.

“As it happens, many of those seniors were women,” she said, “so it mattered a lot to women.”

There seems to be no Michigan-based women’s-related legal cause in which Darlow hasn’t participated in some fashion, as her resume includes being president of the Wo­men Lawyers Association of Michigan, and involvement with the International Women’s Forum Global Affairs Committee, the Michigan Women’s Campaign Fund and the Michigan Women’s Foundation.

After 35 years as a practicing attorney, Darlow’s commitment today is to the University of Michigan Board of Regents, where she serves as chair. But she’s proud to have broken down a door at the State Bar, as the first of four female presidents (the Bar’s fifth will be installed in 2011).

“So many women were so genuinely happy that a woman had that position,” she said. “I got letters from women, and not all of them were lawyers; some just read that there was a woman in the president’s office, and they offered their support.”